Amerilla

I wondered how much of it was ad-libbed by Spader, but I may be wrong. Red has a history of spouting odd biographical trivia, so I could see that being the first thing that floated to his mind. But I think the point was that he was talking specifically about Cary Grant. When Liz asked him what the hell he was talking about with the LSD stuff, he went off on a seeming tangent about how Cary Grant had started out in a poor, working-class family and transformed himself into the model of a debonair Hollywood movie star. "Cary Grant" was a character that Archibald Leach constructed and embodied for decades. Who just happened to like to go on the occasional acid trip. So a long, slightly amusing way to acknowledge that thisRed is a character build around the thatRed. My guess is that MLP was Original Red's wife. They would have gone decades without seeing each other and Naomi believed Red abandoned her and Jennifer, so if presented with someone who looked like a much-older version of a long gone former husband, I could handwave her not realizing he was an imposter. There was a great Red monologue in one of the early seasons where he talked about coming home one Christmas Eve to find his wife and daughter murdered. In the very first season, he buys (and immediately blows up) a family home. So my guess is that Faux Red somehow got tangled up with Original Red, something Very Bad happened, and Faux Red ended up adopting Original Red's persona. Although that's probably too straightforward for this writing team.

I think it was too early in the game for that -- it's never even been entirely clear the showrunners had much say in whether Neal was going to stay or go. Seems like that was a choice made higher up the food chain during the S2-S3 hiatus, or even later. So I think at this point, they were still seeing him as a long-term member of the regular cast. To me, the whole "Lacey" thing was meant to play like a dual enchantment of both Belle and Rumpel. Belle (at least at this point in the story) represents his better instincts and desires, and after Lacey rebuffs his attempts to be "good," he embraces his cursed nature and reverts to that persona. (RC plays the later parts of the Lacey cycle almost like Gold is punch-drunk, like he's barely able to contain going Full SparkleDark.) WIth Neal, that manifests at playing out the same mistakes he made originally: selfishly pursuing his own wants over Bae's needs. Neal then "dies" again. As with all Rumpel stories, it has less to do with Belle or Neal (or any feeling the writers might have about Belle or Neal as characters) than putting Rumpel in a position to chose one path over another.

So that will get them to 100 episodes, right? I was flipping around Twitter this weekend and saw Sean Pertwee saying that they were just getting ready for the final table read this week. This would indicate that the scripts are written and the final filming schedule set. So I wonder if the two extra episodes are going to be Frankesteined together out of material already shot and some bridge scenes added in for narrative coherence -- or what passes for narrative coherence for Gotham -- or if they're actually going to write and shoot new episodes before the final wrap?

She is a historian on whatever they need her to be a historian on. Despite the fact that history has majorly changed and should no longer match what she once knew. The history on the show is so basic that Lucy could be a grad student teaching first-year US History seminar, and history geeks -- such as myself -- tend to have an endless supply of trivia based on the whims of our interest. So, in the previous episode, Lucy knew the basics: that NASCAR arose out of Southern moonshining culture, arguably something a historian with a grounding in early 20th century cultural history would know -- but Wyatt knew the details, because it was something he was plausibly interested in. In "Hollywoodland," Lucy clearly had an interest in 1940s film history, but she wouldn't need to be a film historian per se -- just read a couple books on the era and retained a few of the details. Plus, nothing they've done so far has changed history in a way that's resulted in (to paraphrase early Wyatt) dinosaurs walking down Fifth Avenue. Details have changed, but the broad sweep of history is (so far) intact. I thought it was pretty spot-on. She was doing a Mid-Atlantic accent (or Transatlantic accent), which sounds very British, with a slight Austrian accent. Most people working in the US entertainment industry in that era would have been drilled to speak that way. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/oh-old-timey-movie-voice/

This one, I believe: Lucy's version was a little less fitted, which I think detracted because it looked a bit big on her. But then again, for the storyline purposes, it's a stolen dress. It's not like she had time to go to a tailor for a fitting.

As a historical matter, it's hard to say if it would have matted. Patents are valid for 20 years and they aren't renewable. Her tech was patented in 1942, so it would have expired in 1962 no matter what they did. The military didn't start using it until it was already out from under patent. This wasn't an attempt to screw her over: the military was resistant to using outside/civilian designs in the 1940s and early Cold War, and the technology itself was apparently tricky to implement. Her design needed to find its moment, and that moment didn't come until 20+ year later.

I wasn't surprised by the Jessica reveal, but I did find myself a little sad they didn't give Lyatt a couple episodes of happy togetherness before tossing it in the mix. I understand they only have 10 episodes, and that sometimes means slamming on the gas to get thing lined up for the finale, but I think it would have been a stronger story if they'd put just a little more space between "yay, we're in love!" and "oh, poop, dead wife is back!" It was Lucy, both times. I do think part of that was to make sure the audience really understood there was hot, romantic lovin' just before it all blows up, but I actually thought it was in-character for Lucy. Huge parts of her life have either been proven to be a lie or have simply been erased. Wyatt has become one of the few constants -- a protector, a supporter, someone who doesn't change even when history changes around them -- so it made sense to me that she'd want reassurance that this next step in their relationship was a real thing that was happening. Right before it all blows up. She's also the girl who (established just before aforementioned hot, romantic lovin') choose debate club over prom, so it also played as basic insecurity that the bad-boy-turned-soldier had walked away satisfied. Last week, I would have said they were just trying to flesh out his backstory a little more. Now, I think they're building to something, because... I think that's your season-finale right there: both Lucy and Wyatt are "purebred" Rittenhouse, and their offspring -- conceived somewhere in the timesteam and technically a fourth person in the Lifeboat -- will turn out to be a necessary part of the Rittenhouse World Domination Plan. I really like Jiya, but I don't think that whole deep-dive into her health had all that much to do with her. Any guess on what brought Jessica back? I read some speculation that maybe killing the studio security guard towards the end of the episode might have altered the timeline, but my money is on Emma, because, well, Emma is horrible. She told Lucy in 1918 that she'd made repeated hops across time to make sure Lucy's sister could never be born. No reason she couldn't have done the same in Jessica's killer's timeline to make the murder un-happen and fracture the Time Team.

From what I've been seeing on Twitter and Tumblr: yes, in the same way CS fans were satisfied with the conclusion of that story a couple weeks ago. The very best any fan could hope for after season after season of relentless angst was an illusion of a long, albeit mostly offscreen, period of happiness. Ending that story with Belle's death in old age was actually better-received than I expected. It allowed the fans to feel like they had had a lot of peaceful years together and Belle refusing the opportunity to live on because she believed it was her death that could finally set Rumpel on the path to freedom was very much in-character for a person who started off sacrificing her freedom to save the lives of her community. Given the show's propensity to fall back on aging and death as a reversible condition, just having Belle live a long life, raise her son to manhood, grow old, and die peacefully in her husband's arms feels positively historic. Overall, I feel like it was also meant as a little love letter to Robert and Emilie -- to give them those last moments of screen time together to play the characters as they perceived them. I certainly understand the majority of the board's opinion that Rumbelle often came off as an abusive relationship, but I also get that Bobby and Em never saw it that way. (Thus their horror when Barbara Bennett asked them about the abusive aspect it at Comic Con that time.) They always saw it as a tragic true-love story. That's one of the reasons that fanbase stayed so devoted over years and years of shitty writing/plotting: because the knew Bobby and Emilie were at least trying to give their story some pathos and heart. And let's face it, that was an uphill battle for most of the series.

Yeah, but Belle's desire to "see the world" that was always pretty spotty characterization on the show's part. It popped up occasionally to drive a plot-point, but like the rest of the characters, Belle was stuck in Storybrooke by the demands of the premise. And with Emilie not getting picked up for S7, they obviously just decided to play that through to the end. (As someone who unashamedly really liked the final season of Lost, I think it would have been interesting if Jen and Em had stayed on and they had played out that premise of Emma/Hook Prime and Belle/Rumpel getting new personas in the real world and meeting up all over again. I know I'm probably a lone voice in the wilderness on that.) Even in a better show, where Belle was more fully-realized as an autonomous character, I could see it playing out as it seems to be in the upcoming episode. After everything that happened to her S1-6, it makes sense that a Post-S6 finale Belle and Rumpel would find some sort of refuge where they could raise Gideon without drama or trauma. In its own weird way, this premise is more true to Belle's character as it was shown, not told. Belle spent most of her life in isolation. She spent decades in captivity. Her chosen life partner is someone who essentially sold his soul to gain an illusion of the safety. Most of her outside relationships have been shown to be fairly transitory and transactional. So the idea that she's be comfortable retreating to seclusion with her own small family and (presumably) a long reading list has some logic. I think Rumbelle fans have already written 56,875 iterations of that scenario over the years, and 99% of them probably did a better job of it that whatever they're going to see on Friday.

Here, ultimately, is my problem with the whole boatsex thing: it was preceded by multiple episodes of dwelling on Dany's barrenness (or lack thereof) and voiced over with an explanation of the real family tree...to the point where it felt less like a "love scene" than the somewhat-perfunctory insemination of a woman by her own nephew -- not out of any great or enduring love, since their entire relationship has consisted of starting at each other while making questionable tactical decisions, but out of the plot's need to knock Dany up with The Next Generation as we hurtle towards the end of this generation's chapter. That being said, Kit has a VERY nice bum, and the scene was mercifully short, so I'm complaining too much.

I thought he left because she came this close to having him killed. After lying to him, belittling his desire to keep his word, calling him stupid, accusing him of conspiracy and treason, and implying their baby had replaced him in importance. Kind of kills the romance, even among incestuous twins.

One good thing: It's likely that we won't have to hear the words "bend the knee" again. Seriously, scriptwriters, that's the sort of things that get drinking-game fans killed. Nobody's liver can absorb that much booze. One bad thing: We're going to be talking about Dany's uterus well into S8.

Also sort of sucks that Gilly doesn't get credit for uncovering that little tidbit. As I remember, Sam was sort all "yes, dear, whatever," when she was reading those passages.

It's a small thing, but one of my favorite moments last night was the look on Jaime's face when Brienne says: "Fuck honor!" It's the same look most kids have the first time they hear their mothers swear. Maybe Jaime doesn't know where Jaime is going. My immediate thought was that he might be going to find Tyrion or Brienne, but Cersei turning him out after almost having him killed is quite a lot to process. He may have to have a moment at the crossroads in S8 to decide which road he's going to take. RE: Tyrion creeping about during #boatsex. I read a relatively plausible theory this morning that it was jealousy, pure and simple, that he has come to love her in the same destined-to-be-friendzoned way Jorah has and has that same resigned-but-still-kinda-butthurt aura as Jorah. Since he first made it to her court, he's used his position has her Hand to push Jorah and Dariio out of her inner circle and made himself her chief advisor. But Jon is a real threat to Tyrion's role in Dany's life, since she's consistently been listening to him pretty much from the start PLUS the possibility of Sexy Playtime Babymaking. (Not that listening to either Tyrion or Jon has been particularly profitable for her this season, and getting knocked up may not be much benefit to her in the long run, either.)

+1000 A real weakness of this season is a variation on the short-arc problem we know and loathe for OUAT. By shortening the final two seasons by 3 episodes (even if some of the remaining episodes are super-sized) they end up having to throw aside time, space and simple logic to cram a complex story into a tighter space, and they lose a lot of detail and nuance in the race to get all the characters where they need to be for the various set pieces. (I'm looking at you, Neverland and the Underworld.) You also have the problem with inorganically making characters instant DestinedTrueLoveSoulMates (*cough* Outlaw Queen *cough*). You could have solved all the time and space problems in GoT this past week by having Dany and the Dragons simply fly the Magnificent 7 north of the Wall in the first place, dropping them off with the intent of picking them up once they'd had time to catch a wight. You could have had almost all the same interactions and scenes we saw in the episode, but it would have saved Gendry some sore leg muscles and we wouldn't have had to think about supersonic ravens. (Plus, you would have had a moment for people who aren't Dany to react to the experience of flying a Giant Friggin' Dragon. Tormund would have rocked that sort of scene.) But the writers decided it was better to drop plot anvils about how Dany and Jon are destined to have a million emo babies together.